by Sam Shepard
I can hardly believe I was a choirboy once. There it is. Evidence. Picture of me in the fifties. Back there in the fifties. Innocent. Or so it seemed. Snapshot: Ike and Spot. Frigidaire gleaming. Picture of me in black robes. Puritan floppy white collar. Butch haircut. Waxed and perky. Look at that. Crooked squinting smile, unsure what it’s projecting exactly. The smile. Pinched lips. What’s it trying to say? What’s it hiding? I can’t remember being there, to tell the truth. But something must have been. Some other one. Not me now. This me now. Not this one here. Some other. Watching. Staring out. Watching very closely. The proceedings. Rituals. Nothing escaped me, if that’s what you think. Wafers and wine. Flesh and blood of our Lord. Cannibal congregation. Swarming sex. Submerged. Fever. Bulging behinds. Crotches rock hard. Christ on a stick. Blood of the feet. Dripping nails. Mothers of friends. Sisters. Girls’ rear ends. Sex. Chicas. Lipstick so thick it crumbled right off into their steaming black laps. Fingernails of the Virgin Mary. Raw smell of pussy. Right through the cotton. Singing. Chants. Incantations to the one and only. The Holy of Holies. The Triple Threat. Voices praying. Knees buckled. Going down on the velvet. Rustling thighs. Silken calves. Going down on Jesus. Crucified. Bleeding through and through. Then gathering back up. Struggling to the surface. Gasping for air. Back up to the Lord. For mercy or what? Echoes off the stone walls. The droning voice. Sermon. Protestant. Certain. The whole effort of it. The jaw. The teeth. The distance from life. The great distance. Outside. From here to there. Out there. Where the hot cars sit parked. Waiting. Steaming black top. Outside in the heat. Hot air. Just waiting to roar off to anywhere but here. Tonopah. Wichita. Anywhere but right here.
Cat in a Barn at Night
If you go to shoot a cat in a barn late at night and you want it quick and sudden so as not to wake the children; whatever you do don’t use a pistol. You’ll never get it done. The son-bitch will run howling all up and down the rafters with a slug right through his skull and you’ll never find him in the dark. I’m telling you. Don’t even think about using a handgun. If you can manage to catch the bastard, drop him in a burlap oat sack and tie it shut with baling wire. Don’t forget to use mulehide gloves and long sleeves or he’ll slash your white skinny ass to ribbons. Hang the sack to a stout beam and back off no more than five foot. Shoot the sack point-blank with a full choke twelve-gauge loaded with steel goose pellets and have a whole boxful on hand in case the bag keeps twitching. I’m telling you. Don’t even think about using a pistol.
Philip, South Dakota
(Highway 73)
He lost his head completely. I don’t know what set him off. Just started firing and firing and firing. In a circle. Gas pumps exploded. People fell. People ran for cover. I don’t know what set him off, tell the truth. They closed the Cenex—the feed store—Dairy Queen. All those little shops around there. They just folded up and went away after that. It’s like a ghost town now. I’ll take you down later if you want to see it. Shocking. Completely deserted. Weeds. Broken windows. Nobody. I don’t know what set him off. I really don’t.
Nephophobia
(Veterans Highway)
Fear of clouds? Why? Out of the whole panopoly of phobias, why that? There was a name for it. He looked it up. A title. Something reassuring about it being named. Someone’s had it before him. He thought. It’s already in the world. He thought. Someone else is or has been already possessed by clouds. Succumbed. In this way. “Nephophobia”—that was it. Possibly Greek? Clouds. Antiquity. Ticking away. All across the naked Alleghenies that day. Driving the twisted 64. The “Veterans Highway.” There they were. Extremely close. Hanging above the mountains. Piled up faces. Clouds misshapen. Faces in the heavens. Horrible. Bloated cheeks like those old cherub angel paintings. Medieval. Caravaggio. Gouged-out eyes. Gigantic demons from on high. This was going to be a difficult trip. Just getting across. Just getting over to Stonewall Jackson’s old stronghold where he bled to death from “friendly fire.” (It’s not such a modern term.) Could he make it? There was no stopping now. No pulling over. He tried his best to not look up. Keep his mind on the road. What was left of it. Hug the rumble strip. But there they were—sucking his attention. Seducing him up into looking. And now they’d change—the eyes, the cheeks. Like flesh sloughing away. The heads sliding off. Joining other heads. A whole family. None of them looking related. But then they’d melt; one into the other. Becoming others. Ancestors, maybe. Could he make it across? Could he make it through this? Just stay between the lines. Grip the damn wheel and stay between the lines. It’s not that big a deal.
Victorville, California
(Highway 15)
Queens Motel, with a dull green plaster brontosaurus, all chipped and peeling from the desert sun, standing tall on its hind legs in front of a huge black satellite dish facing the Roy Rogers Mountains. I hadn’t realized they’d actually named some mountains after Roy. I’d never heard of the Roy Rogers Mountains and I grew up here. I grew up with Roy. He was one of the first television cowboy heroes I can remember watching. I watched Roy in the flesh too, riding Trigger down Colorado Boulevard in the Rose Parade alongside Dale Evans. I had no idea he got some mountains named after him. That must have happened long after I left. I wonder who decides that, anyway. Who decides to give mountains a name—or streets? They must do that by committee or something. I know a guy down in Texas who got his dad’s name put on a freeway outside Dallas because his dad owned the asphalt company that poured the road. Then there was a little side street in New York City called Thelonious Monk Place. It might still be there. I thought that was cool. Somebody must have really had to lobby for that one. And then, of course, they’re always renaming stuff too. Taking the old name down and putting a new one up. That happens all the time. Dictators like to do that. Have you noticed that? Totalitarian tyrants. You never know how long a name is going to last from one regime to the other. Like, for instance, the Roy Rogers Mountains could have a Chinese name in fifty years. You never know. Roy could be long forgotten by then if he isn’t already. Monk might last a little longer than Roy but you never know. Of course you can’t really compare East Coast idolatry to West Coast and it’s probably not fair to allegorize fifties cowboy heroes with iconoclastic Jazz Legends but there you go. In fact fairness isn’t even part of the issue. I don’t know why I brought it up. Maybe there won’t even be any mountains left at all, let alone streets. Nothing left to name. I’m not going to be around, that’s for sure. Still, I wouldn’t mind seeing some of these names changed but it’s not going to be in my lifetime. The Richard Nixon Library, for instance. Bob Hope Airport. Ronald Reagan Drive. How about having a Joaquin Murrieta Boulevard? He got his head cut off and paraded around the streets of Los Angeles on a stick and they don’t name shit after him.
Elko, Nevada
(Thunderbird Motel)
Drag my saddle in and prop it up on the wine-stained carpet. Slight smell of pizza puke coming from the curtains but too tired to care. Crash, sitting on the edge of the mattress. Stare at the perfect acorn oak-leaf pattern carved swirling into the bullhide skirts by gnarly Mexican hands. Always brings some sense of order. Riding the Great Basin for days now, following Jones. Always following Jones. Some grand far-flung plan of his to trap mustangs in canyons. So far all we’ve seen is their dust. Wiped out. Sore and raw through the knees. Toilet in here keeps moaning and whining like some distant ambulance that will never arrive at the scene of destruction. Forlorn. Flip on CNN just to pretend I’m still in the world. More lies about the war. More exploding roadside goat carcasses. More bodies piling up. I’ve seen this before. Right next door the casino keeps ringing like churches gone wild. Clanging and churning away. Circus music. What am I hearing? What am I seeing from this far edge of the bed? Talons, nicotine-stained fingertips digging quarters out of plastic cups. Oxygen running through green tubes, up the noses of the dead, the already dead. Righteousness ringing its head off. Jackpots of stone. Saddle-soap my tack. That’s it. A job. Give me a job. Glycerine and water. S
ip Jack. Tomorrow we’re supposed to meet up with some rancher named Valmy, west of the Rubies. Unload a Gooseneck jammed with pipe corral. Panels. Chains and stakes. Rawhide hobbles. Nylon rope. I’m just not sure about Jones. This whole scheme of his. Whether he’s still got his wits about him. Never was a real market for these in-bred mongrels. Why mess with them at all when you could start with a real horse. Quarter horse or at least a grade. Then you’ve got all that hauling out to California. Halter-breaking. Round-pen time. Blindfolds. Scotch hobbles. Sacking them out. Throwing them down. Canvas tarps. Why go through all the torment? Hospitalization. What’s the point? Eighty bucks a head? You’ve got more diesel in them than that. This room’s forty-something right off the top. What’s he thinking? Something romantic maybe. The Misfits. Days gone by? Give me a break. I asked him about it this morning over black coffee. Just faced him up with it. Asked him what’s the story? Why persist? You know what he comes up with? Some crazy-ass limerick ditty that he spouts through this raw hangover twinkle of the eye. Goes like this:
There once was a cautious old man
who never romped or played
he never smoked
he never drank
he never had a mate
So when finally he passed away
his insurance was flat denied
for since he never had seemed to live
they claimed he’d never died
Jones cackles till his coughing fit starts up again then hauls his huge frame off the stool and hitches up his Wranglers. His Spanish-rowel spurs and jingle-bobs make their little music as he ambles toward the open door. This time of year the Great Basin air has the smell of high dryness, close to starched shirts. He pauses at the threshold to light a cigarette and blows smoke out across the Humboldt. “Looks like a good morning for it,” he proclaims with his back flat to me. “Meet you down at the pens,” and he strides off with the Lucky jutting out his jaw. Who am I to refuse?
Llanos
Incredible these pictures of smoke and fire and meat and men sitting around squinting into the gleaming pit drinking heavy stuff red sticks spitting at their tall tales some true enough some dumb cracked guitars smells of horse and calves bawling their heads off for mama behind mesquite pens and one poor fool has actually brought his cell phone all the way out here and calls his hooker in Ft. Worth through digital hopeless roaming against the long splash of stars and yapping dogs in Llanos beyond belief.
Faith, South Dakota
(Interstate 25)
On a hot blue day I’m heading out to Faith where the great saddle horses originate. I’m going to get me one. A buttermilk dun with a quarter-moon brand on his cheek. I’ve seen him in my dreams. That’s right. I’ve seen him from far away. I’m going to bring him back home and ride him down to get the mail. And when they ask me where he’s from, I’ll say I bought him out in Faith on a hot blue day.
Reason
I’m not talking to you about horses anymore. You understand absolutely nothing about horses and I’m not talking to you about them.
Then don’t.
I won’t. I should have known better than to bring them up at all.
I just don’t understand why you would need to get another one when you’ve got a whole pasture full already.
I don’t need a reason to need another one.
Apparently not.
Why would I need a reason?
I have no clue.
I just like having them around.
So why don’t you get another one then?
I will.
Good.
I don’t need a damn reason.
horses racing men
mummies on the mend
what’s all this gauze bandaging
unraveled down the stairs
has something come apart
in here
something without end
Man O’War
Man O’War died with an enormous erection that wouldn’t go down. It’s true. It’s well documented. Ask anyone over at the Jot ‘Em Down store. After repeated heart attacks at the age of thirty and servicing hundreds of mares, he finally succumbed. But his member remained permanently stiff. His member remembered. Obviously, there were no women present at his modest funeral just on the outskirts of Lexington. A black canvas sheet was draped ceremoniously over the rude appendage. Apparently two or three gentlemen in bowlers found it somewhat offensive, but they couldn’t deny his great preponderance.
“Shoe”
William Shoemaker weighed barely a pound when he was born, in an adobe shack south of El Paso. He was hardly breathing as his grandmother gently cradled him in one hand. She put young William in a shoe box then lit the woodstove. She dropped the heavy oven door and placed the shoe box with little Willie in it, there to warm. It was in that shoe box that Willie came back to life and went on to win eight thousand, eight hundred and thirty-three races.
Lightning Man
Met a man in Montana who was struck by lightning right on the top of his head. On the crown. He showed me the scar. It was deep brown, the color of fried beef liver; about the size of a quarter with a little black dot in the center. He had a whole article written up about him in a fish and game magazine and, for weeks, scientists from the university visited his hospital bedside because, I guess, there aren’t that many survivors of lightning strikes direct to the head like that. This man was a fishing guide up in the Absaroka mountain range and had taken a group of Japanese tourists out for trout when the sky turned suddenly black and began to crackle with yellow splinters. From long experience in the high country he knew full well to get the hell out of the water in conditions like that and told the tourists to break down their fancy titanium fishing rods and pack them away. As they were trekking out single file across an open field, this guide was in the lead and, being the tallest, the lightning sought him out. A human lightning rod. Later, when they interviewed the foreign fishermen, they all said the guide’s whole body lit up with a blue halo as though he were about to be lifted off to heaven. When the lightning escaped the guide’s ankle and grounded out, it then traveled down the entire line of Japanese tourists, knocking them all flat, one by one, like bowling pins. They said it happened so fast they didn’t know what hit them. There they were, laid out in a line in an open field at the foot of the mountains, thousands of miles from their homeland, next to an American fishing guide with smoke pouring out the top of his head.
These days now, the Lightning Man spends all his time sitting at a workbench in front of a window that looks out on those very same Absaroka mountains. He creates authentic-looking arrowheads with elk-bone tips, turkey feathers, and Osage shafts. He says he’s able to stay focused on the work for maybe an hour at a time but that they haven’t yet invented a painkiller that can touch the agony that runs like fiery gravity down through his legs.
Somebody told me once the Greeks had invented a magic elixir for chasing away the memory of all suffering and grief.
Saving Fats
“Incredibly violent down there right now,” he says to me as he thunks himself into the B seat. I’m sitting in A by the window, minding my own business, perusing the thin World Traveler magazine and happen to hover over a glossy Acapulco beach scene; oiled bodies, turquoise water, palm trees—the usual tourist bait. I’m not even contemplating a Mexican trip. “Ten cops killed down there just last week, in fact,” he continues. “Kneecaps knocked off. Executed gang-style.” He points an index finger to his temple and pulls the trigger with a little click of his tongue.
“Is that right,” I say, hoping he’ll catch the cold drift, but he rattles right on, oblivious.
“Drugs, cartels—you know. The Big Dogs have moved into the fancy pink villas; taken over the beach, major hotels, the whole damn town. Armed to the teeth too. Easy to get caught in a crossfire. Never even know what hit you.” This time I just make a little hmm of acknowledgment as he grinds his slab hips from side to side trying to lash the seat belt around his tremendous mid
dle. He’s already sweating profusely. I had the feeling he might be a sweater and now, here it comes, oozing from the deep folds in his neck, beading up on his forehead and chin. “Same thing as down in New Orleans,” he goes on (although I fail to make the connection). “Looters were armed better than the cops. AK-47s, Glocks, over and under shotguns—Believe me, I was down there.”
“Really?”
“Right in the middle of it. Never seen anything like it and I was born and bred down there. Cops just ran away and hid. Not that you could blame them. It became a question of survival—purely. I count myself among the lucky, though. Friend of mine had a boat. Used to be Fats Domino’s bodyguard. Had one of those—what do you call ‘em?—’torpedo’?—no—’cigarette’ boats—you know.”
“Cigarette?”
“Yeah—long, skinny orange sucker with some kind of big-ass Buick engine in it, rumbling away—chrome manifolds—Blow you right out of the water you’re not careful. Don’t know where he copped the fuel. Must’ve had a tankful already. Anyway, he comes chugging along in this rig and sees me up on the roof of my crib, just clinging like an armadillo, and he honks his horn at me.”
“Honks his horn?”
“They have fancy horns, these cigarette boats. Sound like a European sports car. Just blares out with some dumb melody line like from Goldfinger or something. As though he’s cruising chicks. And here I am, straddled up there on the shingles in my BVDs and don’t recognize him from Adam, but he’s waving his Hawaiian shirt and yelling for me to jump down into the water and he’ll pick me up.”